On the occasion of the 6th meeting of the Arqus Rectors’ Council, we are thrilled to announce that the Arqus Alliance will expand, adding two new members to the Alliance: the universities of Minho in northern Portugal and Wroclaw in northern Poland. Both are also comprehensive research universities that share extensive experience in joint projects and a common profile as internationalised institutions with deep regional engagement in medium-sized cities.
The Alliance expands in members and countries, now covering all areas of European geography, including East Europe. Today, the Arqus Rector's Council meeting was already attended by Prof. Dr. Rui Vieira de Castro, Rector of the University of Minho and Prof. Dr. Przemysław Wiszewski, Rector of the University of Wroclaw.
The new incorporations are of great value for the Alliance. The University of Minho is highly committed to internationalisation and is very focused on the socio-economic ecosystem, engaged with the region and committed to the Sustainable Development Goals, whereas the University of Wroclaw has a strong commitment to academic freedom and core democratic values of Europe. It is also a highly internationalised university, with strong links with other universities in Europe and specifically within their region.
With these two new universities, the Alliance incorporates almost 44 000 students and more than 4 000 academics and 1 700 administrative and technical staff. We are looking forward to a new era of the Alliance, stronger and more representative of the different realities and regions of Europe.
About Arqus
The Arqus European University Alliance currently brings together the universities of Bergen, Granada, Graz, Leipzig, Lyon, Padua and Vilnius, seven longstanding prestigious universities who share the conviction that European cooperation is essential to the global future of their institutions. Arqus, being a people-centred Alliance, aims to promote a multilingual, international, entrepreneurial and innovative approach in the provision of education, research and innovation.
Arqus European aspires to build on the member universities’ sound prior experience in cooperation in order to achieve a high level of integration in its members’ policies and action plans in order to:
● enhance the education of critically engaged European and global citizens who are able and willing to contribute to a multicultural, multilingual and inclusive Europe which is open to the world;
● increase and improve the joint research capacity of the partner universities;
● better respond to the grand societal challenges of the 21st century in Europe and beyond.
The principal ambition of the Arqus Alliance is to act jointly as a laboratory for institutional learning from which to move forward in the design, testing and implementation of an innovative model for deep inter-university cooperation. The Alliance aims to consolidate a joint governance structure to facilitate the development of consensual joint policies and action plans, to consolidate participative structures to facilitate cross-cutting integration at all levels of the partner institutions, and to share its experience with other groupings in order to communicate the added value to be found in its model of integration.
The Arqus Alliance aims to centre its efforts on enabling people: enabling a widely diverse student body and enhancing their learning experience; enabling a similarly diverse staff community and promoting their individual and collective professional development; enabling society at large by opening our doors and fully responding to the mission it has entrusted us.
